Sit With It: A New Paradigm for Living

By Xavier Vazquez

The relentless pursuit of happiness is causing us harm. We are obsessed with happiness seeking and consumed by constant avoidance of discomfort. This makes life seem meaningless and dull.

Society offers up many solutions to our problems, but they do not work as advertised. Cultural role models (celebrities, politicians, religious authorities, scientists, gurus, and life coaches) aren't any happier than we are, no matter how well they put on appearances.

Sit With It: A New Paradigm for Living explains that we have all inherited a harmful thought paradigm, one which turns us all into pleasure addicts. The people, things, and situations in our lives have been reduced to sources of personal pleasure. Many of us don't even realize that we are trapped in addictive cycles of distress, compulsion, and pleasure seeking.

Asking one simple, yet unexpected, question can disrupt this Status Quo: What do I feel when I sit quietly without distractions?

Sit With It describes a new paradigm for living, one that provides us the opportunity to change our relationship to the people, things, and situations in our lives. The reader is asked to put its message to the test.

Is it possible to gain freedom from the Status Quo?

Find out for yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xavier Vazquez
• Release date: Apr 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370885589

Xavier Vazquez

In 2012, a curious event altered my view of the world, and inspired years of inquiry. Several years later, an epiphany brought me a simple, yet profound new paradigm for experiencing life. I've decided to share it in a book: Sit With It: A New Paradigm for Living.

Book preview

Book Description

Many of us spend our entire lives seeking happiness and doing our best to avoid discomfort in this seemingly meaningless world. Society offers up many solutions to our problems, but they do not work as advertised. Cultural role models (celebrities, politicians, religious authorities, scientists, gurus, and life coaches) aren’t any happier than we are, no matter how well they put on appearances.

Sit With It: A New Paradigm for Living explains that we have all inherited a harmful thought paradigm, one which turns us all into pleasure addicts. The people, things, and situations in our lives have been reduced to sources of personal pleasure. Our life experience has become more dull, unfulfilling, and one dimensional than it needs to be. Even worse, many of us don’t even realize that we are trapped in addictive cycles of distress, compulsion, and pleasure seeking. Asking one simple question can disrupt the Status Quo:

What do I feel when I sit quietly without distractions?

This book describes a new paradigm for living, one that provides us the ability to radically alter how we relate to the world. You will be asked to put it to the test. Is it possible to gain freedom from the Status Quo?

Find out for yourself.

Sit With It: A New Paradigm for Living

Self-Published: Second Edition.

© 2020 Xavier Alexander Vazquez.

All rights reserved.

Dedicated to V and MJB.

www.sitwithit.net

For inquiries contact:

mailto:[e-mail]

SWI Logo by Slavisa Dujkovic - www.dribbble.com/dujkovic

The Message

This book presents a new paradigm for relating to the people, objects, and situations in our lives. It describes a way of living different from what most of us are accustomed to. While this text diagnoses the root cause of the dire socio-economic and environmental predicament that humanity finds itself in, its primary message is about how we live our individual lives.

The inspiration for this text came from an unexpected encounter outside of a Starbucks in May 2015. An unkept lady selling white chocolate bars approached me in the parking lot. She told me that she was fundraising for her son, but the chocolate did not seem like your typical school fundraising candy. It looked like a box of retail candy, and I considered the possibility that it had been stolen. Nevertheless, I bought a bar and made my way towards the entrance of the café. The woman then surprised me by exclaiming, I hope it rains today! This struck me as odd considering that she was on foot. Why would she want to get rained on? I yelled back, why? She answered, It makes my grass greener!

A sudden understanding struck me at that moment. This statement by a vagabond shattered my long-held beliefs about the value of unpleasant things in life. It was as if I had caught a glimpse of a deep truth that I had never understood before. That night, and the following morning, a stream of images poured into my awareness. I felt the urge to draw them. This was pure unencumbered inspiration the likes I had never experienced before. The drawings looked like the doodling of a madman, but it all made sense to me. More sense in fact than anything I’d ever been told or read about the human condition.

Over the next few weeks, I attempted to write a manuscript describing this new found understanding. I failed. It was too much to process all at once. After a year and a half of contemplation and consternation, I completed the text and the diagrams for anyone who might be interested. It has now been over five years since my encounter with the lady in the parking lot and, try as I might, I have not been able to discredit what I learned.

This book is for those of us who feel that there must be more to life than the drudgery we face day-to-day. It seems that we are never quite satisfied with our circumstances. This message is for anyone who is curious to explore what lies just beneath the surface of our everyday lives. It is for those who are beginning to doubt conventional cultural interpretations of what life is all about.

There is incredible power within each of us. Our imaginative creativity combined with our physical and technical prowess allows humanity to influence the world in ways other species cannot. We can create a vastly different world than we currently inhabit, but our power is being squandered. We unfairly turn the people, objects, and situations in our lives into sources of pleasure, and cede our personal power to compulsive behavior. I don’t want you to believe me. What follows is an attempt to outline how you can find out for yourself.

The Perspective Game

There is one caveat I must mention right up front. When reading this text, I ask you to put